Well, here we are again ...

... but at least it's not ninety degrees in the shade.

I didn't start until after one o'clock, when the sun was far enough past noon that I was working in shadow. Hot enough working in heavy denim coveralls without the sun beating down on my shoulders, too.

The work went fairly quickly. As you can see, we were able to scrape off most of the thick, dark latex paint that takes forever to grind off because it clogs up the sanding belts and calls for a lot of elbow grease.

I wish there was a way to attach a shop vac to the sander. Grinding all that paint off the house leaves a thick layer of grayish dust all over. I try to catch it with the drop cloth, but quite a bit of it inevitably drifts away, settling as far away as the deck. It's impossible to cover the whole yard in drop cloth; I'm not Christo.

This is as far as I could get in an afternoon. I really wanted to sand the paint off that topmost white board, but even standing on a ladder it was about a foot over my head, and I just didn't have the strength left in my arms to do it. Maybe tomorrow ... or, maybe not.

How to pass the time

Scraping paint has become an almost zen-line activity. It's not mindless; I have to concentrate in order to get just the right angle on the blade to get it under the paint yet keep it from gouging the wood siding. And yet it's so repetitious and endless that each stroke becomes a mantra that sedates my consciousness. I listen for the clock in the kitchen to chime the top of the hour and I'm always surprised at how quickly it comes.

It may not look like much progress, but I assure you we chipped quite a lot of paint off today. You see that part over the air conditioning unit? That was solid dark paint all the way up until I went at it today. The stuff between the windows was especially hard to chip away; it's not nearly as brittle as most of the rest of it. And the paint on the wall behind the airco unit is a bitch to get at. The best angle I've managed to find is from above by sitting on the unit and working between my splayed legs. Fine work for a contortionist, but I can take about five or ten minutes of that, tops, before I feel ready for a full-body cast.

Progress check

On the theory that nothing happens unless you blog about it – and what's a blog post without a photo? – here's a snapshot of the back wall of the O-Home after B and I spent a collective four or five hours scraping paint off the siding.

The dark paint still remaining between the windows was too powerfully stuck to the house for our mere mortal strength to remove. We left it for later when I'll put on my home-made hazmat suit, slide a spanking new 50-grit belt in the power sander and grind away until I'm down to bare wood. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that.

What did you do after dinner?

We're at it again.

We picked up a pizza on the way home and gobbled it down in about a half-hour, leaving us about ten minutes of daylight. Rushing outside to grab our scrapers and, in B's case, mask and gloves, we got back to work peeling paint off the siding. Fun!

The before and after photos below illustrate the challenge of trying to get any work done in the short time left between getting home after work and the point when it becomes too dark to see. The top photo was taken at about six-fifteen; the bottom photo, just before seven-thirty.

I offered to rig some lights, but B said, "No."

The paint looks remarkably good on the back of the house, not at all like the blistering, peeling paint that was on the side of the house. If I pick at it just a little bit, though, I end up peeling it away in sheets as big as my hand.

The weekend's supposed to be warm and clear. I guess I know where we'll be and what we'll be doing. *sigh*

Home improvement called on account of rain

It rained all day yesterday, all last night, and all morning today, making it impossible to sand or paint. We could scrape, but standing in the mud with rainwater running down our backs into our pants would make the task even more miserable than it was in the hot sun.

That's our story, and we're sticking to it.

Tucked In For a Long Winter's Nap

My Darling B has spent the morning putting up vegetables from her garden: She converted a whole mess of tomatoes to sauce, and while she did that, she soaked the stems of these garlic bulbs under a wet towel so she could braid them together and hang them in the basement where they'll keep through the winter.

We're not all about painting and home improvement here at Our Humble O’Bode. Thank dog.

Almost Frame-ous

I tore out all the rotten molding around this window, I tore out the rotten awning window at the bottom, I put in a new window and new molding, and I'm feeling pretty damned pleased with myself right about now.

The finishing touch was to caulk around the edges of the molding to try to keep the new wood safe from rot for a while.

I'll have to tear it all out again next summer to replace the single-pane windows, top and middle, but that's so far into the future it hurts to think about it. Right now I'm sitting fat, dumb and happy.

What I saw

I bought a new hand saw. I had to. I spent twenty minutes trying to rip half an inch off the width of a piece of brick molding with the trusty but old and dull hand saw that's been in my tool box for at least ten years, probably as much as fifteen. It's still a good saw, but now that I'm in my forties I can't keep flailing away as long as I could when I was thirty.

I stopped once about halfway through the cut and considered running to the store for a new saw right then, but we were trying to get as much done after supper as we could, and I was losing daylight fast. A trip to the store would take at least fifteen minutes, maybe as much as twenty or twenty-five, if I ran into a snag (and I always run into a snag), so I kept at it. Five more minutes passed and the kerf lengthened maybe an inch or two. When I stopped to catch my breath and get my strength back, I had to think about running to the store again.

No. I had to get something done tonight. I bent to the task and started again. The cut lengthened another inch. Now my arms were becoming numb. I had to think about each and every stroke to keep going. Finally I stopped cold, set the saw down, went inside to get the car keys, and bolted down the road toward the hardware store.

Fifteen minutes later I had a brand new, sharp saw. A saw so sharp I had to hold it back, or rather hold myself back. After pushing hard on the old saw, I had to adjust my technique to ease the new saw into the cut, guide it more carefully through the kerf, and, when I got a knuckle a little too close to the teeth, remember that this was not the older, more forgiving saw I'd been using for years.

I didn't have much daylight left, but in the short time I did have I managed to cut two lengths of brick molding and fit them around the window. Tomorrow I'll cut and fit the other two lengths and caulk around the whole window so it's finally sealed from the elements and I can take down the plastic sheet covering it once and for all.

Let the sun shine in

I finished framing the new window this afternoon and tacking the trim back in place. Except for staining, the inside is done. I think it might have been harder than tearing out the old window and installing the new one. All the trim's got to fit just right or it ends up looking really sloppy, as, I fear, it looks to some extent now, but if I may say so it's not too bad for my first window.

Still have to cut the brick molding to fit and nail it in place around the outside. I spent about a half-hour scraping hardened caulk and flaking paint away from the rough edges. I'll make a double-check tomorrow evening and start cutting some molding if I have time. Hope to have everything nailed up and caulked before the end of the week.

I can see clearly now

About two and a half months ago, I tore away the rotten molding around this window, thinking I would replace it in an afternoon. After exposing the awning window at the bottom and discovering it was rotting away, too, my afternoon project revealed itself to be no longer quick or cheap.

I put in an order for a new window shortly afterward. Owing to the odd size, there weren't a lot of choices to be had. I went with the Anderson window because it was the best one I could find and it cost only thirty dollars more than the cheapest I could find. In the meantime, I covered the window with heavy plastic sheeting to keep out the wind and rain, and waited. The window finally came from the factory week before last. You may be able to guess why I didn't install it last weekend.

Today was a pretty nice day for tearing a hole in the side of your house to install a window, cool and sunny with a fair breeze. I started by prying all the molding off the inside frame, but that didn't reveal a easy way to remove the old window, as I'd hoped it would. It fit so snugly into the rough opening that it betrayed no screw or nail fasteners, so I fell back on my tried and true method of deconstruction: I fetched my saw and started cutting. Five minutes later, the old window lay in pieces on the deck and I was poking the nozzle of the shop vac into the nooks and crannies to make a clean hole for the new window.

The new window's got a vinyl outer cover with flashing all around. I don't like the look of vinyl much, but if it keeps the weather out for years and years I suppose I can learn to live with it. The inside of the window's a nice blonde pine. I used pine furring strips to frame it up, too, even though we'll probably end up staining it to match the rest of the trim around the room.

I worked on installation until around four in the afternoon, when I called it quits on account of I wanted to sit on my butt for a while and blog. I hope to finish the framing and tack the molding back into place tomorrow.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I would like some cheese with that wine

This is me, not scraping or sanding or painting the house.

Labor Day Scrape Away - Final Day

It is done. The primer coat, anyway. At this point, we're calling that a significant milestone.

It's humbling to note that, when we began this adventure eighteen days ago, we believed we could have painted the whole house by now. Today, with an entirely different perspective, we'll be happy to have the back of the house sanded and primed before winter. If we can manage to get the top coat on, too, that'll just be icing on the cake. Butter icing. With big, sweet roses.

Labor Day Scrape Away - Final Day

We are just too damned happy to finally be painting instead of scraping and sanding, you wouldn't believe it.

I get to climb the ladder to paint the upper siding panels and B gets to paint the lower panels, because she's a girl. No, that's not it, it's because she's scared to climb the ladder. No, that's not it, either, it's because she possesses a special knowledge of painting ground-level wood siding that I lack. That's it.

This pink Pepto-Bismol-looking color is the priming coat, by the way. The top coat will be a much darker red brick color, and I was assured by the two experts at the paint department of Ace Hardware that it would cover the primer in one coat. If it doesn't, I'm going to bring what's left of the primer back to Ace and dump it on their heads.

It took us about two hours to paint this much of the side, so I think we'll be done by mid-afternoon and I'm lobbying hard for an early end to the work-weekend so we can enjoy the final hours of our extended Labor Day weekend sitting on our butts on the back deck, probably with cold brewskis in our hands.

Labor Day Scrape Away and Pastry-eating Fantasy

VICTORY!

It took every particle of strength I had in me, but I finished sanding the north side of the house.

No fair pointing out the gable is still painted.

It's okay, really, the paint on the gable seems to be bubble-free and unpeeling, so we're going to paint over it and hope for the best.

I picked up a gallon of primer and a couple of paint buckets at the local Ace Hardware store this afternoon and, if all goes according to plan, we'll spend tomorrow afternoon with paint brushes in our hands.

Labor Day Scrape Away and Pastry-eating Fantasy

Holy Crap, This Sucks!

I can't remember the last time I did anything that wore me out like this. Wrapping myself in quilts and lifting weights all day would seem easier.

I started sanding at about two o'clock in the afternoon and finished up just before five, with a fifteen-minute break to stand in front of a fan while I drank all the ice water I could hold.

Those two siding panels right above the windows go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, by the way. And on. And on and on. Okay, I'll stop now.